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Starting reception, hypermobile 4yo, walking to school

27 replies

DeliciouslyBaked · 13/06/2025 09:18

I hope this is the best topic for this. Sorry for the length! 🙈

Since birth, our HV has suspected DD1 (4yo at the end of June) is hypermobile. We had our first physio appointment a few months ago, where the physio told us it was looking very likely but that they wouldn't formally diagnose until she was a bit older. They have agreed to see her again in Aug in preparation for starting school in Sept, and in the meantime to build up her muscles and strength with lots of physical activity, swimming, ballet etc, which we were doing anyway, even before the physio advice. When you see her run next to her peers, it is very obvious as her joints are all over the place.

She will be going to a school that is 15-20mins walk from our house. We live in London and so don't need a car but the school is a bit awkwardly not on a bus route. Taking a bus as far as we can won't really save her that much walking.

I'm sure by the end of reception, she'll be coping fine with the walk to and from, but when weve practiced walking to and from school, she has really struggled. And that's without a full day of school on top. I'm starting to worry a bit. I'm wondering what others in a similar situation would do at the start? Conscious that I don't want to set her up to fail by her getting so tired by the walk to school that she then cant concentrate during the day. Everyone tells me how tired kids can get, especially at the start, even if (like DD1) shes been in FT childcare since she was around 18months.

We have a cheap scooter for her, although she struggles a bit with it (i think due to her knees). We've bought her a bike for her birthday but im not sure how shes going to get on with it. Our morning routine will be to drop DD2 at nursery on the way so potentially she could hop on the buggy board on the empty buggy? But i was hoping to switch to a smaller buggy really and get rid of the buggy board and I won't have the buggy with me for school pick up. Should I buy a more robust scooter so that she can stand on it and I pull her along? Buy a wagon so that she can hop in if tired half way home but then it at least doesn't look like a buggy?

Probably massively overthinking this but I loved school, have always loved learning and really just want to set her up for a great start!

OP posts:
DeliciouslyBaked · 14/06/2025 10:12

VivIsBlonde · 14/06/2025 09:04

My daughter has HM and physio was the worse thing for her!!
Wwas advised walking was good for her and she’s always walked to nursery and then school as we had no choice, once she could ride a bike we cycled

Just to be clear, she isn't having regular physio sessions. What I mean by physio is that she had an initial physio assessment and is due an updated assessment in Aug to decide if we need to get OT support for school. This thread has been so helpful to give me some ideas to talk to the physio about at the next assessment, so thank you everyone! 🙏

OP posts:
Pineapplesunshine · 14/06/2025 10:57

Just to put a slightly different perspective based on what we were told by a paediatric physio. Our youngest has hyper mobility diagnosed when a toddler - the paediatric physio advised against a scooter as they said children tend to use one side more than the other and it can be unhelpful in terms of improving strength / addressing hyper mobility as ideally you want your child to do exercise which is balanced to strengthen each side equally to help stabilise them, etc. It may just be my child and I am not a physio but I’m sharing in case it’s something to ask the physio about in your child’s case. We used buggy board when she was tired, but also encouraged her to walk a lot (relatively!) in the hopes of increasing strength which we were led to believe should help with hyper mobility. x

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